The invention relates to a swimming pool cleaning system in which a single pool pump drawing water only out of a main drain can simultaneously operate a skimmer, a leaf and debris trap device in the suction line, and a plurality of pop-up cleaning heads disposed in floor and/or wall of the swimming pool.
Intense summer wind/dust storms are common in various parts of the country, especially the Southwest desert regions, wherein large amounts of leaves, dust, and other debris are deposited in swimming pools, presenting a burdensome cleaning problem. Some known pool cleaning systems agitate the water to keep dust and debris in suspension in the pool water so that the dust and debris are removed by the main pool filter. However, large debris blown into the pool by the intense summer wind/dust storms does not stay in suspension long enough to be filtered and instead settles to the bottom of the pool.
Typical well known components of a swimming pool cleaning system are disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. NO. 4,322,860 "POOL CLEANING HEAD WITH ROTARY POP-UP JET PRODUCING ELEMENT", by Henry D. Gould, issued Apr. 6, 1982, which discloses indexed rotation pop-up cleaning heads for installation in the bottom surfaces of a swimming pool, and U.S. Pat. NO. 4,523,606 "DISTRIBUTION VALVE", by Charles M. Gould and Andy F. Blake, issued Jun. 18, 1985, which discloses a rotary distribution valve that sequentially distributes water from the high pressure outlet of a swimming pool pump/filter system into the various pop-up cleaning heads. Commonly assigned allowed application "VACUUM SYSTEM FOR REMOVAL OF DEBRIS FROM SWIMMING POOLS", Blake et al., filed Nov. 29, 1995, Ser. No. 08/564,779 (U.S. Pat. No. 5,750,022), incorporated herein by reference, discloses a vacuum chamber having an access port, an outlet port connected to a suction inlet of the pump and an inlet port connected to receive water and debris pumped from the bottom of the pool. The above mentioned commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,322,860 and 4,523,606 also are incorporated herein by reference.
Another known system is described in the commonly assigned abandoned patent application "VACUUM-BOOSTED AUXILIARY SWIMMING POOL DRAIN/FILTER SYSTEM", Blake et al., filed Jan. 13, 1992, Ser. No. 07/821,393, incorporated herein by reference, and marketed by the Assignee as its QDR (Quick Debris Removal) system. That system is similar to the LEAF TRAPPER settled debris removal system marketed by Caretaker Systems, Inc., of
U.S. Pat. No. 4,501,659 entitled "SKIMMER APPARATUS FOR SWIMMING POOLS" by Charles R. Henk, issued Feb. 26, 1985, discloses a skimmer in which all of the water returned by the pool pump through the filter to the pool is injected through a venturi or entrainment nozzle into the lower portion of a skimmer chamber. The water ejected by the entrainment nozzle entrains adjacent water in the skimmer body and carries such water through a return tube back into the swimming pool. Such entrainment causes surface water of the pool to flow by action of gravity into the skimmer to replace the entrained water.
The skimmer device described in the Henk patent was marketed by Hayward, Inc. for use in pools in which a bottom port of the skimmer shown by reference numeral 12 in FIG. 7 of the Henk patent housing was connected by a pipe to the suction side of an auxiliary swimming pool pump. The Hayward skimmer was marketed for the purpose of using only its suction port for "normal" skimming, and supplementing such normal skimming in a "turbo" mode by directing all of the return water into the entrainment nozzle when extra skimming was needed. The total amount of water drawn into the skimming inlet of the Hayward skimmer when in its "turbo" mode, was equal to the amount of water drawn by the auxiliary pump from the bottom of the skimmer plus the water entrained by the entrainment nozzle and carried out of the return tube along with the pumped water. The amount of pumped water typically was in the range from 60 to 100 gallons per minute. To achieve simultaneous skimming and operation of pop-up cleaning heads, an additional auxiliary pump would have been needed just for the Hayward skimmer. This is thought to have been the main reason for the very poor market acceptance of the Hayward skimmer.
It should be appreciated that an owner of a swimming pool having therein even the most effective commercially available automatic cleaning system occasionally may wish to use a conventional manual pool vacuum sweeper to manually vacuum the bottom of the swimming pool and thereby remove accumulated debris such as sand, gravel, leaves or the like more thoroughly and more quickly than can be accomplished by the automatic cleaning system. A conventional manual pool vacuum sweeper includes a long flexible hose coupled to a suitable suction port in the pool water recirculation system. Note that some settled debris, such as sand or gravel, may be too heavy to be effectively moved by the cleaning head jets to move it to the main drain. Or, the debris may be too large to pass into the main drain and hence into the strainers or filters of the pool cleaning systems.
In all known swimming pool cleaning systems, water drawn through a manual pool vacuum sweeper and into a suction port of the pool cleaning system passes through the main pump and main filter. The amount of flow of such "vacuumed" water is limited by the capacity of the main pump. It would be desirable to provide a manual vacuuming capability in an automatic pool cleaning system which exceeds the debris holding capacity of the "hair and lint basket" of the main pump. It also would be desirable to avoid damage to the pump impeller by heavy debris which is manually "vacuumed" from the bottom of the pool in the manner described above.
Until the present invention, there was no available "integrated" swimming pool cleaning system using only a single low horsepower pump (eg., one horsepower) to simultaneously provide the combination of good skimming, effective operation of pop-up cleaning heads embedded in the bottom and/or side walls and/or steps of the swimming pool, and removal and trapping of leaves and debris from the bottom of the swimming pool, either through a main drain or a mobile robotic cleaning device which moved along the bottom of the swimming pool. Although such a system would be highly desirable, and in fact for years there has been a great deal of motivation in the swimming pool/accessories industry to provide such a system at a reasonably low installation cost and having reasonably low operating and maintenance costs, that need has not been met prior to the present invention.
Note that in prior pool cleaning systems for large pools in which multiple skimmers were desired, suction provided by a single low horsepower pump had to be divided among the multiple skimmers, and the result usually was that adequate skimming could not be simultaneously achieved by all of the skimmers from the suction provided by the single pump.